This morning my prodigous 23-year-old journalist sister has an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the nation's most respected and prestigious newspaper along with The New York Times. In the essay, Sara responds to a ridiculous comment by the creator of HBO's "The Wire", a former Baltimore Sun reporter in the 1980s, that Americans don't care about the news anymore. She begs to differ, and as usual, makes a pretty airtight case, at least if you're talking about people with half a brain (you know--liberals, Duck fans).

A little over a week ago, Sara also had an op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. This one was more personal, about her struggles through the college financial aid process as part of a piece about Harvard deciding to give more aid to middle-class students.

Part of me is as astonished seeing Sara pen these pieces for the nation's great newspapers--she's also written op ed articles for the Los Angles Times on Gen Y and the Christian Science Monitor on the rising pop cultural cache of Barack "B-Rock" Obama--as I am watching our postman currently deliver mail in 36-degree weather while wearing shorts. But even though she's barely old enough to buy alcohol, Sara has been at this for a long time now when you figure in the six or seven years of college and high school newspaper work.

As if her op-ed pieces weren't impressive enough, Sara was also promoted from her copy editing job to opinion editor at the newspaper where she works, the Los Angeles Daily Journal. I just hope in her ongoing path toward world domination, she remembers the little people who used to give her piggy back rides and make her favorite fettucini with sausage and cream sauce.

Today my sister Sara has an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. My 22-year-old sister. In the Los Angeles Times. I remember when I got my first New York Times clip at 29 I felt so excited that it was coming just before my 30th birthday. But Sara's been out of school for nine months! (The photo here was taken at age 5.)

The article is titled "Not all Gen Y'ers are spoiled brats" and responds to a study released this week arguing that college students are more narcissistic than ever. She talks about how for her generation you no longer need to be talented to be famous, or hard working to be a star. But Sara is a living contradiction to that. Now I really feel bad for all the times when she was whining as a toddler or young child and I actually called her a spoiled brat. Now I call her, in an eerily uncanny imitation of Emperor Palpatine, "My young apprentice." But unlike Anakin Skywalker, Sara's mission is a good one.

As if the Times piece weren't enough for her portfolio, Sara also had her first clip in People magazine last week. She reported on the Grammy awards and interviewed Quentin Tarantino on the red carpet. And by day, she's an editor at Creators Syndicate, where she works with some of the most famous syndicated newspaper columnists in America.

And this comes after being the editor-in-chief of both her college and high school newspapers, the latter of which was honored as best high school paper in America.

Incidentally, Sara tried to get a job here in Portland recently at both Willamette Week and The Oregonian, but both turned her down. She was too inexperienced, they said. In one case, the brushoff was done over email without even the courtesy of a phone call. Pardon the overdose on big-brother pride, but I feel like calling up certain editors and hiring coordinators now and borrowing Matt Damon's line from Good Will Hunting: 'Hey, do you like apples? Maybe a golden delicious, or a granny Smith? Well how do you like them apples, mother f---ers?'

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for Sara's pending world takeover in the months and years ahead.

This Friday my sister Sara will be graduating from college at USC. As I’ve told friends over the past few weeks, particularly the ones I’ve known for a long time, they’ve been stunned. Sara was the child they remember clinging to my ankle when I’d be trying to leave the house with them. How could she be graduating from college? Recently on the phone Sara reminded me that I’d once said, “Wow, when you graduate from college I’ll be thirty-four!” As in old. And now that moment has arrived. I no longer feel reticent about being the age I am, but it’s still slightly surreal for all of us to see Sara well into adulthood.

That said, Sara’s been ahead of the curve for a long time. She was put in a talented-and-gifted program early in elementary school, a harbinger of things to come. I remember when she still was missing some permanent teeth Sara memorized all of the US presidents, so you could just throw out any number between one and forty and she’d name the chief executive. In 12 years of public school and four years at USC, anything other than an ‘A’ grade has been a major anomaly. In high school, she was editor of the school paper when it won first place in the nation. At USC, she also became the editor of the Daily Trojan, while also running with the cross-country team, working at a work-study job, and keeping a permanent spot on the dean’s list.

Sara is also a ferociously hard worker. For the last couple years, it seems like her day has begun with an 8AM class, continued into the evening at the paper, and then extended into the wee small hours with homework. Last summer, she worked as an intern at People magazine, where she acquired a bounty of stories to tell friends about Botoxed celebrities and the yip-yip dogs they tote to Starbucks and nightclubs. Most recently she interviewed Dolly Parton at press event celebrating the DVD release of 9 To 5. What a way to make a living.

Speaking of which, Sara’s been sort of half-jokingly saying, “Oh my god, I’m done with college. What am I going to do with my life?” Which is funny, because she seems so solidly on track for an impressive journalism career – hell, she already has one. But I know the feeling is sincere. It’s daunting to not be in school for the first time since kindergarten. And the job market isn’t always kind to kids fresh out of school – unless one is willing to set aside most of what he or she has learned in school in order to make copies or serve food.

The thing I’ve tried to impart to Sara and other people that age coming out of college is that it isn’t necessary to land the ideal job right out of school and start in full-throttle on a career. I think at 22, coming off so many consecutive years of school, the best thing to do is just try and have some fun. The career and achievements will come, along with responsibilities like a mortgage or marriage. I hope Sara goes to Italy with a backpack, or discovers some author or filmmaker she never had time for in school, or even just takes the time to enjoy some bad daytime television. At this age you won't have much money or assets, but you have one thing many of us older people envy: freedom to do whatever the fuck you want.

Something must have been in the stars last week, because three big coups came within a matter of days.

First, we returned home from Europe on Monday to learn that Willamette Week reporter Nigel Janquiss had won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories chronicling former mayor/governor Neil Goldschmidt's affair with 14-year-old female in the 1970s while running city hall. This was only the fifth time in its history that the Pulizer went to an alternative weekly, and while I've certainly had a bone or two to pick with WW while writing for the paper over the last six and a half years, I feel enormously proud. Plus Nigel is a very nice guy and has regularly been the most likely among the news reporters to say "Hello" to me when I'm on the editorial floor.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, a call came in from London, where our good friend Neil Griffiths (with whom we had been staying just a few days prior) rang at 1:40AM his time, somewhat drunkenly I might add, to tell us that he had won the prestigious Authors Club Award for Best First Novel for his book Betrayal In Naples. Neil hadn't even written an acceptance speech for the black-tie gathering because he didn't think he had a chance of winning. But anyone who has read his book (it's not distributed in the US but you can buy it at Amazon UK) knows it shouldn't have come as a surprise.

Then came what for me is the main event. That same Wednesday afternoon, my sister Sara called. At first I didn't pick up the phone, because it was after 5:00 and I didn't want to take any more business calls (we screen most of the time anyway). But then I heard Sara's voice on the machine say in her sarcastically understated way, "Uh, I think that you should pick up your phone."

Sara is a junior at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications, and she was calling to say she had been chosen as next year's editor-in-chief at the Daily Trojan newspaper. She has been a senior editor there since her sophomore year, and was clearly in line for the job. But she still had to sweat it out with one other candidate.

For most of her life, Sara has been besting me academically and professionally. And I've enjoyed every minute. In high school I had been rather proud to have a 3.7 GPA, until Sara rang in with a 3.99 -- one 'B' in her entire four years. I was content playing intramural basketball; she edited her school paper to a first-place-in-the-nation award....twice. In college at USC, she has not only been a member of the cross country team, but is a regular on Dean's List and holds down a work study job while putting in essentially the equivalent of a full-time job at the paper. I routinely get calls from her at 9:30 or 10:00pm where she's on her way home from the paper to start dinner and, later, begin her homework.

What's also interesting to me about the success of Sara, Neil and Nigel is that all three are writers who do something different from me. Sara is a good reporter and critic, but she is most at home as an editor--being part of a team that puts a paper together. As a freelance writer like me, one is expected to be going after a salaried job as a staff writer or editor. But I have discovered that I much prefer to maintain the status quo, moving from one publication to another like a writing ronin, and sleeping in without an alarm clock. (I learned this from my mom, an accountant who time after time turns down promotions because she doesn't want to be a boss, and because she's sure enough of herself to reject ambition for its own sake when she can be happier continuing as is.)

Neil is a fiction writer, and that is something else I've often been encouraged to do -- and most certainly will not. Often times people assume nonfiction writers and journalists are just punching the clock with articles to bide their time until they can write fiction. But one of the reasons I hold Neil's writing in such high regard is that I could never do it. Fiction is just too wide open for me to imagine conjuring stories out of nothing. And besides, I'm a realist.

Nigel is obviously an investigative reporter, and that is something I have done and, quite honestly, am not cut out for either. A few years ago I was able to get my foot in the door at the New York Times by volunteering to assist with news stories in Portland of national interest when they came up from time to time. So on countless stories dating back to about 2001, be it Christian Longo's murder of his family or the helicopter crash at Mt. Hood or the Tacoma roots of DC sniper John Malvo--or most memorably a murder-suicide in my home town of McMinnville--I would collect information and conduct interviews for Times reporters under very tight deadlines and tremendous pressure. A few times, I even wrote the stories myself for the paper's National section. It was all a tremendous source of pride and a real boost to my resume, but deep down I always felt like a fake. I hate reporting, and earlier this year I finally let the Times's Seattle bureau chief know I didn't want to work on news stories anymore. It's a tremendous relief to not dread the phone ringing with New York on the line when a major story here breaks.

So while it's because of my personal connections to Sara, Neil and Nigel that I'm happy for their achievements, it is also with a sense that each one brings talents that I don't have -- which I say not out of false modesty or self pity, but out of contentment and confidence in what I do as well.